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The William G. Bowen Series
"Keep the Damned Women Out": The Struggle for Coeducation
A groundbreaking history of how elite colleges and universities in America and Britain finally went coed
As the tumultuous decade of the 1960s ended, a number of very traditional, very conservative, highly prestigious colleges and universities in the United States and the United Kingdom decided to go coed, seemingly all at once, in a remarkably brief span of time. Coeducation met with fierce resistance. As one alumnus put it in a letter to his alma mater, "Keep the damned women out." Focusing on the complexities of institutional decision making, this book tells the story of this momentous era in higher education―revealing how coeducation was achieved not by organized efforts of women activists, but through strategic decisions made by powerful men.
In America, Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth began to admit women; in Britain, several of the men's colleges at Cambridge and Oxford did the same. What prompted such fundamental change? How was coeducation accomplished in the face of such strong opposition? How well was it implemented? Nancy Weiss Malkiel explains that elite institutions embarked on coeducation not as a moral imperative but as a self-interested means of maintaining a first-rate applicant pool. She explores the challenges of planning for the academic and non-academic lives of newly admitted women, and shows how, with the exception of Mary Ingraham Bunting at Radcliffe, every decision maker leading the charge for coeducation was male.
Drawing on unprecedented archival research, “Keep the Damned Women Out” is a breathtaking work of scholarship that is certain to be the definitive book on the subject.
As the tumultuous decade of the 1960s ended, a number of very traditional, very conservative, highly prestigious colleges and universities in the United States and the United Kingdom decided to go coed, seemingly all at once, in a remarkably brief span of time. Coeducation met with fierce resistance. As one alumnus put it in a letter to his alma mater, "Keep the damned women out." Focusing on the complexities of institutional decision making, this book tells the story of this momentous era in higher education―revealing how coeducation was achieved not by organized efforts of women activists, but through strategic decisions made by powerful men.
In America, Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth began to admit women; in Britain, several of the men's colleges at Cambridge and Oxford did the same. What prompted such fundamental change? How was coeducation accomplished in the face of such strong opposition? How well was it implemented? Nancy Weiss Malkiel explains that elite institutions embarked on coeducation not as a moral imperative but as a self-interested means of maintaining a first-rate applicant pool. She explores the challenges of planning for the academic and non-academic lives of newly admitted women, and shows how, with the exception of Mary Ingraham Bunting at Radcliffe, every decision maker leading the charge for coeducation was male.
Drawing on unprecedented archival research, “Keep the Damned Women Out” is a breathtaking work of scholarship that is certain to be the definitive book on the subject.
672 pages, Hardcover
Published October 4, 2016
22 people are currently reading
462 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
April 11, 2017
Very well researched and balanced. I graduated from Smith in 68 and my brother graduated from Dartmouth in 65. The conversations about going coed were just beginning when I was at Smith. I am so proud of the school Smith has become since recommitting to educating women. When I was at my 45th reunion I saw the emphasis on STEM and saw the increased number of undergraduates who were women of color and who were from all over the world. It was painful to recall the old attitudes of what is the point of educating women when they are just going to get married and raise children. My brother would have been one of the alums who never wanted women at Dartmouth. Those boys needed the civilizing influence of women. The Ivies and 7 Sisters have become more merit based and more inclusive' the legacy days are passing
March 9, 2019
I've already mentioned how deeply angry this book makes me. Stabby, even. It took me forever to get through it with the constant need to put it down and let my blood pressure return to normal.
So, long about the mid-sixties the most elite private colleges in the US and UK discovered decreasing numbers of applications, and a smaller percentage of registrations from the number of successful applicants. High school students were preferring to attend public institutions that were not segregated by gender. Then it kind of became a free-for-all as they each (in the case of the Ivys and most of the Seven Sisters) raced to go coed before one another, so as not to lose too many of their highest-ranked applicants to whichever one got there first.
Some schools managed better than others, but they all bollixed it up somehow. Interestingly, non of the Ivies focused on the idea of fairness, or anything really any loftier than not losing applicants. Not surprisingly, many people had trouble grasping the idea that female college students were primarily interested in a college education for themselves, rather than existing to enrich the environment for male college students. This was less of a problem at Oxbridge where women's colleges existed within the university system already. All the boy schools got tremendous push-back from alumni, most of whom got over their ire when they realized that their daughters or granddaughters could now attend the alma mater. Idiots.
The girls schools got similar push-back from alumna, but had more realistic concerns about loss of leadership roles for women students and employment opportunities for women professors, valid concerns as it turns out. The women's colleges that didn't enroll men in the first wave mostly didn't ever: there remained a market for women-only schools.
Quality scholarship on a topic that just makes me seethe. Highly recommended for anyone with the intestinal fortitude to wade through so many old men being stupid.
Library copy
So, long about the mid-sixties the most elite private colleges in the US and UK discovered decreasing numbers of applications, and a smaller percentage of registrations from the number of successful applicants. High school students were preferring to attend public institutions that were not segregated by gender. Then it kind of became a free-for-all as they each (in the case of the Ivys and most of the Seven Sisters) raced to go coed before one another, so as not to lose too many of their highest-ranked applicants to whichever one got there first.
Some schools managed better than others, but they all bollixed it up somehow. Interestingly, non of the Ivies focused on the idea of fairness, or anything really any loftier than not losing applicants. Not surprisingly, many people had trouble grasping the idea that female college students were primarily interested in a college education for themselves, rather than existing to enrich the environment for male college students. This was less of a problem at Oxbridge where women's colleges existed within the university system already. All the boy schools got tremendous push-back from alumni, most of whom got over their ire when they realized that their daughters or granddaughters could now attend the alma mater. Idiots.
The girls schools got similar push-back from alumna, but had more realistic concerns about loss of leadership roles for women students and employment opportunities for women professors, valid concerns as it turns out. The women's colleges that didn't enroll men in the first wave mostly didn't ever: there remained a market for women-only schools.
Quality scholarship on a topic that just makes me seethe. Highly recommended for anyone with the intestinal fortitude to wade through so many old men being stupid.
Library copy
June 7, 2022
If you're particularly interested in Harvard, Yale and Princeton, add a star. A meticulously researched study of the internal and external forces leading to the institution of coeducation in different forms at the leading Ivy League universities during the late 60s and early 70s.
September 17, 2023
THE STRUGGLE IS REAL.
I didn't understand what coed meant until a few years after I was placed into such an environment as had both boys and girls.
Officially, I remember my public school having an approximately even male/female ratio.
Lately my education has been skewing itself to more men than women.
That only makes sense though because the number of men in the place where I have chosen to study, the PRC, is higher than the number of women.
I think that it should re-equalise itself within the next generation or two, though, so I am trying to exit stage left now before the character attacks begin in earnest.
(I am not saying through that I think that women attack each others' characters! I am expressing a wish to travel.)
I mean, I have researched the idea of boys & girls learning together through reading educational instructions, but from age n/a to kindergarten I had no idea and just played with my sister because my cousins were mean when they did interact with me, which was close to never, and has continued along this way, except for nasty bits which I might have even just made up in the darkness of the night to explain away bizarre aches and pains, which I have heard might be from other medical causes so I couldn't blame my cousins again.
It surprised me most to discover how many of the schools this author names I had either heard a great deal about or 100% visited before, on my own quest to better myself as a Feminine Model of Excellence. (All of them.)
Originally when I was looking for this book at the library, it was just because I saw it was an endnote to a different book I had ordered about why there need to be more women in science.
The group I remember joining in undergrad was small and almost exclusively included chemistry and physics majors, or that's how it felt when I visited their interest meeting as the lone Oboe Performance major in their midst. I didn't ACTUALLY go around polling people about their plights, though I HAVE researched interests, wants and desires in the past for this one PSC200 class I remember minding as closely as I could because I am not a people person and I don't even remember the professor's name, though I think it might have started with a D. There were probably a fair amount of undecideds and business majors, as I think WCU has become more and more that way as time continued to pass and professors from all the normal departments retired, and the replacement adjuncts started to pop up in more and more departments.
This author comes from Princeton University.
New Jersey and Pennsylvania (where I am writing this review from) are reciprocal states, so I am pretty sure whatever that means is that students who live in either state can get home rates at the other place. I wasn't too clear on what the Rutgers person on the phone had told me since I was already sold on my original plans to go abroad to meet my true love, in 2007. I'd have to call back for exact details, but that's obnoxious, especially if I'm just scouting and not actually planning to do anything with it - and also, I currently reserve long-distance phone bills for alternative business. The tax thing that I Googled didn't seem right. Oh well. The last thing that was moderately okay for me in New Jersey happened fourteen years ago. Then everything went downhill from there. So, even before COVID-19 I felt hesitant about even touching my next-door neighbour state, even though there may be a good school or two there, such as a friend has told me.
I never could grok the traffic patterns.
My mother, who had adored history, always told me throughout my youth that her best friend's name was also Nancy, so that kept my interest level high, even though I am pretty sure this author is a different one. She would say "Well, my friend Nancy would do this, so..." or "One day, Nancy and I went down to the creek, and..." blah de blah, et cetera, ad infinitum.
(And Prof. Rosso, my Latin professor, had commented about the local variances in pronunciation in the word creek. I never knew there was more than one before I had the chance to speak with him.)
It's not Nancy Drew, but Nancy Weiss Malkiel, who wrote an interesting book about the beginning of coeducation!
I wouldn't have been able to take Professor Rosso's course had I not been able to take advantage of the coeducation opportunities available at my undergraduate school, West Chester University of Pennsylvania.
Did you know that some colleges are still only coed at the graduate level? I nearly went to one of them.
I think you might like to consider this book even for the most simplistic reason that, oh my heavens, other people can see you have a curse word on the cover of the book in your hand. I have to protect my innocent little ones! (Cora is curled up at my feet right now and she doesn't care.)
Isn't that so much fun though? Someone as mature as a professor emeritus of history said Damned on the cover of her book and it's so big and red and white!
The inside cover says she's the longest-serving dean of the college! Maybe I should read some of her other books a little later when I have a little more time. Wouldn't that be oodles of fun?
/little-girl mode OFF
My near-decision to almost-go to an exclusively women's college was for a very good reason: self-protection. In my co-ed lifestyle I have had the experience of being given one of those more sluggish drugs one may have read about which could lead to sexual harassment.
However, I cannot erase time, and I don't know what exactly happened that night, anyway because no one has clear answers.
I only have hypotheses.
Moving on.
I am very strongly a proponent for birth control, and always have been, and always will be, even if that's mostly due to its ability to help me with my spotty complexion.
So that's how I thought of this book.
I hope you like it, too!
I didn't understand what coed meant until a few years after I was placed into such an environment as had both boys and girls.
Officially, I remember my public school having an approximately even male/female ratio.
Lately my education has been skewing itself to more men than women.
That only makes sense though because the number of men in the place where I have chosen to study, the PRC, is higher than the number of women.
I think that it should re-equalise itself within the next generation or two, though, so I am trying to exit stage left now before the character attacks begin in earnest.
(I am not saying through that I think that women attack each others' characters! I am expressing a wish to travel.)
I mean, I have researched the idea of boys & girls learning together through reading educational instructions, but from age n/a to kindergarten I had no idea and just played with my sister because my cousins were mean when they did interact with me, which was close to never, and has continued along this way, except for nasty bits which I might have even just made up in the darkness of the night to explain away bizarre aches and pains, which I have heard might be from other medical causes so I couldn't blame my cousins again.
It surprised me most to discover how many of the schools this author names I had either heard a great deal about or 100% visited before, on my own quest to better myself as a Feminine Model of Excellence. (All of them.)
Originally when I was looking for this book at the library, it was just because I saw it was an endnote to a different book I had ordered about why there need to be more women in science.
The group I remember joining in undergrad was small and almost exclusively included chemistry and physics majors, or that's how it felt when I visited their interest meeting as the lone Oboe Performance major in their midst. I didn't ACTUALLY go around polling people about their plights, though I HAVE researched interests, wants and desires in the past for this one PSC200 class I remember minding as closely as I could because I am not a people person and I don't even remember the professor's name, though I think it might have started with a D. There were probably a fair amount of undecideds and business majors, as I think WCU has become more and more that way as time continued to pass and professors from all the normal departments retired, and the replacement adjuncts started to pop up in more and more departments.
This author comes from Princeton University.
New Jersey and Pennsylvania (where I am writing this review from) are reciprocal states, so I am pretty sure whatever that means is that students who live in either state can get home rates at the other place. I wasn't too clear on what the Rutgers person on the phone had told me since I was already sold on my original plans to go abroad to meet my true love, in 2007. I'd have to call back for exact details, but that's obnoxious, especially if I'm just scouting and not actually planning to do anything with it - and also, I currently reserve long-distance phone bills for alternative business. The tax thing that I Googled didn't seem right. Oh well. The last thing that was moderately okay for me in New Jersey happened fourteen years ago. Then everything went downhill from there. So, even before COVID-19 I felt hesitant about even touching my next-door neighbour state, even though there may be a good school or two there, such as a friend has told me.
I never could grok the traffic patterns.
My mother, who had adored history, always told me throughout my youth that her best friend's name was also Nancy, so that kept my interest level high, even though I am pretty sure this author is a different one. She would say "Well, my friend Nancy would do this, so..." or "One day, Nancy and I went down to the creek, and..." blah de blah, et cetera, ad infinitum.
(And Prof. Rosso, my Latin professor, had commented about the local variances in pronunciation in the word creek. I never knew there was more than one before I had the chance to speak with him.)
It's not Nancy Drew, but Nancy Weiss Malkiel, who wrote an interesting book about the beginning of coeducation!
I wouldn't have been able to take Professor Rosso's course had I not been able to take advantage of the coeducation opportunities available at my undergraduate school, West Chester University of Pennsylvania.
Did you know that some colleges are still only coed at the graduate level? I nearly went to one of them.
I think you might like to consider this book even for the most simplistic reason that, oh my heavens, other people can see you have a curse word on the cover of the book in your hand. I have to protect my innocent little ones! (Cora is curled up at my feet right now and she doesn't care.)
Isn't that so much fun though? Someone as mature as a professor emeritus of history said Damned on the cover of her book and it's so big and red and white!
The inside cover says she's the longest-serving dean of the college! Maybe I should read some of her other books a little later when I have a little more time. Wouldn't that be oodles of fun?
/little-girl mode OFF
My near-decision to almost-go to an exclusively women's college was for a very good reason: self-protection. In my co-ed lifestyle I have had the experience of being given one of those more sluggish drugs one may have read about which could lead to sexual harassment.
However, I cannot erase time, and I don't know what exactly happened that night, anyway because no one has clear answers.
I only have hypotheses.
Moving on.
I am very strongly a proponent for birth control, and always have been, and always will be, even if that's mostly due to its ability to help me with my spotty complexion.
So that's how I thought of this book.
I hope you like it, too!
January 31, 2018
Certainly very well-researched, this book explores the transition of leading colleges and universities from single-sex institutions to those welcoming (well, sort of) both men and women during the 1960s.
How things have changed. Even in the mid-1970s, when I was an undergraduate, my university, one of the top state schools in the country, maintained a ratio of accepting men to women 4/1. The reason, supposedly, was a lack of housing for incoming female freshmen. What this really meant was that most of my female classmates were superior students, while the males were middling on up. Obviously very unfair, but that’s how it was.
I’m glad it’s different now for younger women, but it’s pretty clear that many take their situation for granted. This is really something that needs to be recognized, in the workplace and politics, as well as education. Learn from the past, and don’t be complacent.
How things have changed. Even in the mid-1970s, when I was an undergraduate, my university, one of the top state schools in the country, maintained a ratio of accepting men to women 4/1. The reason, supposedly, was a lack of housing for incoming female freshmen. What this really meant was that most of my female classmates were superior students, while the males were middling on up. Obviously very unfair, but that’s how it was.
I’m glad it’s different now for younger women, but it’s pretty clear that many take their situation for granted. This is really something that needs to be recognized, in the workplace and politics, as well as education. Learn from the past, and don’t be complacent.
January 22, 2020
This detailed chronicle and analysis of decisions related to single-sex colleges going coed in the late 1960s and early 1970s will appeal to those who want a blow-by-blow account of who did what when. It is a bit too thorough for a casual reader, but it does an excellent job of describing the culture of prestigious single-sex schools in New England (primarily focused on Princeton, Yale, Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, Dartmouth, Harvard and Radcliffe) and why coeducation was such a big deal (while many many successful colleges and universities throughout the country had existed for years).
The author also tackles the same issue as it played out in Cambridge and Oxford, UK and contrasts those experiences with the ones in the USA. Maybe it is the complex governance structure of Cambridge & Oxford universities, but this section of the book was less clear to me.
It is difficult to remember just how women were perceived in 1968 and how misogynistic our culture was. This was vividly on display at Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth through their administrations, faculty, traditions, alumni and teaching, although many students supported the idea of coeducation.
The epilogue did a good job of describing the effects of decisions about coeducation. I'm glad I stuck with the book, although I did get bogged down with the UK section.
The author also tackles the same issue as it played out in Cambridge and Oxford, UK and contrasts those experiences with the ones in the USA. Maybe it is the complex governance structure of Cambridge & Oxford universities, but this section of the book was less clear to me.
It is difficult to remember just how women were perceived in 1968 and how misogynistic our culture was. This was vividly on display at Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth through their administrations, faculty, traditions, alumni and teaching, although many students supported the idea of coeducation.
The epilogue did a good job of describing the effects of decisions about coeducation. I'm glad I stuck with the book, although I did get bogged down with the UK section.
August 3, 2017
"Keep the Damned Women Out": The Struggle for Coeducation (Hardcover)
by Nancy Malkiel
each page has it's own footnotes......no biblio at the end
by Nancy Malkiel
each page has it's own footnotes......no biblio at the end
November 2, 2019
A thorough and impressive book on an important and overlooked piece of history
June 30, 2024
A hefty read but thorough and well-researched. It opened my eyes to a lot of university history I knew of vaguely but not in detail. Worth the read particularly for my fellow Ivy alumnae friends!
December 6, 2018
This book really spoke to me. It helped explain major arcs that have organized events in my life: the rise of feminism, radicalism in my home town of Berkeley CA, my experience as a transfer student to Columbia University in 1983 to be in the first class of women, ... I had always wondered why the first class of women at Columbia wasn't celebrated. Why for the past 30 years I wasn't part of a cohort of those kick ass smart women -- Class of 1986. Now I know. Columbia didn't go coed for that purpose. It went coed because they were no longer competitive as a men's school. The best male students were going to coed schools. It explains so much of those 2.5 years at Columbia. Now as a scientist with a PhD, I hear about the incredible family friendly practices at Princeton. And that makes sense to me too now. It all comes down to people, including Nancy Malkiel, professor of history at Princeton University and Dean of the college from 1987-2011. This book shows how a scholar can look inward and see and document the players and steps that have shaped not just our world, but my Life.
November 9, 2016
Read for a class assignment. So much research and a great read.
Read
December 2, 2016371.822 M2518 2016
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